Feature Writer: WitchofWestmoreland

Feature Title: SAMHAIN SACRIFICE

Published: 21.10.2022

Story Codes: Erotic Horror

Synopsis: In the community, a maiden is sacrificed each Samhain

Samhain Sacrifice

Two maidens were sacrificed each year in the community. They were slaves, taken as war captives when they were young or bought from pirates across the sea, and raised by the druids in the mountains until their eighteenth year.

Then they would be brought down from the mountains and chained naked inside a special hut built on the edge of the community. All who had reached manhood in the community were then free to deflower the maiden and fertilize her with their seed. This could take several months. When she had become pregnant and her menstrual cycle ceased, she would then be taken to the sacrificial mound outside the community, surrounded by the assembled community in the fields, and there sacrificed, and her blood drained into buckets which were then carried out across the planting fields and to water them, thereby fertilizing and re-fertilizing the earth.

The first sacrifice took place at the start of the spring planting season. This was called the May Day sacrifice. The second sacrifice took place in the autumn as the harvest ended. This was called the Samhain or Summer’s End sacrifice.

The sacrifices did not always go as planned. Sometimes the maiden would not become pregnant, or sometimes other complications would get in the way. When they did, social strife and famine would sometimes result in the community, as that was a bad omen. This is the story of one Summer’s End sacrifice.

Fer was far from the strongest or tallest young man in the community, and as he reached his eighteenth year, he became keenly aware of it. His old childhood friend, Aid, on the other hand had grown to be tall, strong, and lusty, and the girls favored him. Fer was short and scrawny by comparison, though he was deceptively strong and had a wiry frame.

His jealousy grew. A scarlet-haired girl Fer had long fancied had been bedded by Aid that spring, and when Fer found out, he had fallen into a quiet but intense rage. He felt sick and disgusted by everything and was too angry to even fuck the sacrificial maiden in the shed that spring for the May Day sacrifice and lose his virginity, as was his right now that he had reached manhood.

A thousand vengeful thoughts rushed through his mind, but he couldn’t bring himself to go through with any of them. It was too risky. He wanted to kill Aid, but he didn’t know how. The elders would not let them duel until they completed their warrior training over the next two summers, and even if they did, Aid was significantly taller and stronger and would probably win.

When not helping with the planting and harvesting or doing other work for his grandfather with whom he lived, Fer usually spent his days that summer alone and brooding on the moor. By the time the harvesting finished, and the summer came to an end, Fer’s anger and jealousy had begun to cool.

It was then that he saw her. She was naked and being led in a procession by the druids coming down from the mountains with the maiden for the Summer’s End sacrifice. She had a rope around her neck attached to a metal collar that she was being led by, but Fer was enraptured by her beauty and got as close as he could. Her hair was dark and her skin was pale, although as Fer got closer he could see it was smudged with dirt and mud as were her bare feet. As she passed him, he noticed the shape of her buttocks and hips and felt a hard throbbing beneath his tunic.

He followed her where the druids took her to the hut and waited outside when they took her in, barely even noticing who else was around.

“Fer,” he suddenly heard a loud voice say from behind him. “We haven’t seen you around in a while, have we? Off out in the moor all by yourself every chance you get these days, eh?”

Fer felt his face burn bright red and he flashed with rage. It was Aid. He didn’t turn around, not trusting himself to keep his cool.

“Not talking to me anymore, is that it, Aid?” he heard the voice sneered. “Still sore about Maeve? Is that it?”

Still not turning around, Fer felt Aid approaching closer from behind him, and then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Suddenly Fer spun around and struck his fist at Aid who seemed to easily block him, while Fer immediately stepped back.

“Whoa, touchy, touchy, aren’t we, Fer?” Aid sneered. “I might have to give you a beating one of these days if you keep lashing out like that.”

“I’ll kill you, Aid, if you ever touch me again,” Fer replied through gritted teeth.

Aid merely laughed mockingly. Others were approaching to watch their scuffle now, including Aid’s usual gang of companions and some girls. Maeve was even among them.

Fer breathed heavily and tried to control himself, remembering what his grandfather had always said. “Use what’s in your skull now, and break their skull later, boy.”

He walked away from Aid and the others but resolved to come back to the hut the first thing in the morning after the maiden had been ritually bathed and prepared for fertilization. He felt a strong desire to be the first in the community to deflower her.

That night, he couldn’t sleep well and masturbated furiously. He thought of the maiden’s naked body. Her breasts and her buttocks. Her dark hair and her pale skin. Even the dirt on her skin and the metal collar around her neck seemed somehow attractive to him. It made her different. It made her subservient, and under his power. This was a girl who wouldn’t laugh and reject him like Maeve and the others. She was his… or at least would be for a while.

Finally, exhausted from masturbation and fantasy, Fer fell fast asleep. He knew it was already early in the morning, but he told himself he would awaken soon so he could be the first at the hut tomorrow. But he overslept. When he awoke, it was well past daylight and his own step-grandmother (his grandfather’s second wife) was yelling at him to get up and feed the chickens.

His eyes shot open and he felt a burst of confusion, and then frustration and rage. He had forgotten about the maiden. He wouldn’t be the first to deflower her now. Without feeding the chickens or even eating, he flew out of bed and ran across the settlement to the hut at the edge of the community.

Aid was already there, and Fer found himself behind six others in line. It was still early morning, but a lot of men liked being some of the first to deflower the maiden. Aid was already there too and had apparently already taken his turn. Aid probably suspected from yesterday that Fer would try to get there early.

“Poor Fer,” one of Aid’s lackeys taunted as Fer stood in line. “First Maeve, now the slave. Fer always gets second place.” The others laughed loudly but Fer didn’t look at them.

“Fer’ll take what he can get,” another added. “This’ll be how he loses his virginity too I’ll bet.”

“Use what’s in your skull now and break their skulls later,” Fer told himself again. When it was finally his turn, a female druidess showed him into the hut where he was told to wash himself and his genitals in a tub.

Then he was led through a low doorway into the holding room lit dimly by an opening in the roof. The maiden was huddled in a corner atop what looked like a mat of animal skins. In the other corner was a chain bolted to the wall and a wash basin with buckets and rags nearby. It smelled like sweat and sex.

“Alright, you have a quarter of an hour with her, then it’s the next man in line’s turn,” the druid woman said.

Fer nodded in reply and heard the druid woman shut and bolt the little door behind her as she left. Fer stood for a while in the doorway, unsure what to do. He felt excited but also nervous. Finally, he approached closer to the maiden across the dimly lit room and suddenly she sat up on the animal skins, exposing her pale breasts with her dark hair draped over them. Fer stopped again and hesitantly stood over her.

The maiden’s face was somber as she looked up at him briefly, and then shifted her body to lie down again on the skins with her legs slightly spread toward him. Fer felt the throbbing hardness through his tunic and immediately pulled it off and bent down over her. He first caressed her soft, warm breasts, then the side of her face. The bolted metal collar around her neck looked hard and uncomfortable and he gripped it, for a moment wanting to take it off, and then drifted his hands down to her breasts again.

She up looked at him again with her sad, dark eyes and Fer felt an overpowering sense of longing as he, now on top of her, instinctively spread her legs wider and brought his member toward her hairy entrance. He tried to enter her but had some trouble getting in and reached down to massage her slit as he had seen others in the community do when he had occasionally watched them fuck.

He tried to widen her slit and lubricate her with spit from his hand as well, finally entering her. It felt great inside her and Fer fucked her vigorously, grunting, fondling her breasts, and kissing them and her cheeks and forehead and running his hands thorough her long dark hair.

She was so pretty. After a few minutes, unable and unwilling to stop himself, Fer came inside her and rested on top with his member still inside. The maiden still looked sad, which annoyed Fer. He had wanted her to like it, and he felt bad that she hadn’t. Her eyes were downcast now and she wouldn’t even look at him. Fer kissed her forehead tenderly, trying to reassure her.

“You’re so beautiful,” Fer whispered. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. More beautiful than Maeve or any woman in this community.”

The maiden didn’t reply, but in that moment, Fer meant it. There was something about the maiden that enraptured and intoxicated him beyond anything he had ever felt. He wanted her, and he wanted her all to himself. He felt angry for a moment that the rest of the men in the community would be able to fuck her and that she would have to be sacrificed once she became pregnant, but he knew it was inevitable.

Then, before he knew it, as these intense thoughts and feelings overcame him lying atop the maiden, he heard a sudden knock on the door. “Two more minute,” the druidess said.

Fer hadn’t realized how quickly the time had passed and felt dismayed. His member had grown soft and he had taken it out of the maiden but now it was hard again, and he began fucking her harder once more. She whimpered and grimaced beneath him, but Fer kept kissing her to reassure her.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said over and over. “Don’t be sad. How can you be sad when you’re so beautiful?”

He had only just finished cumming insider her again when the druid knocked again and began unbolting the door. Fer kissed the maiden’s forehead once more and turned her face up to look him in the eyes, and smiled at her. Finally, she half-returned his smile as he softly kissed her lips.

Then he quickly pulled on his tunic as the druidess entered and followed her out.

Outside, Aid and his friends were still there and mockingly jeered at and congratulated him for losing his virginity, but Fer ignored them and returned to his grandfather’s hut, lost in thoughts of the maiden and the encounter he had had with her.

His step-grandmother met him in front of the hut and looked furious.

“You ungrateful little shit, I told you to feed the chickens but instead you just went off to go fuck the sacrifice, eh?” she yelled at him.

“I’m sorry, I’ll go do it now,” Fer replied in sudden fear.

“I’m tired of your laziness and disrespect,” she continued. “Niall, Niall!” she yelled to her husband, Fer’s grandfather, and then she took a stick from the doorway and came toward Fer to beat him, something she had done countless times before but not in what seemed like a long time.

Fer felt fearful, then suddenly angry. He was eighteen summers old, a man now, would soon be a full warrior in a few years. How dare she continue to beat him like a child?

He flinched away from her first strike, but she struck his arm that he had put up to block. The rage in Fer boiled over and he suddenly surged forward and pushed his step-grandmother back hard and struck her in the face. She stumbled and fell to the ground in the mud in front of the doorway, and Fer stood over her panting.

“NIALL NIALL!” she shrieked more loudly than before for her husband after a moment.

Fer saw the stick lying beside her that she had dropped, and he imagined picking it up and beating his step-grandmother to death right there, but he managed to hold himself back. “Use what’s in your skull now and break their skulls later,” his grandfather’s words echoed back to him.

Then his grandfather came into sight from the barn with a look of fury on his face when he saw his wife in the mud, now sobbing. He grabbed the stick on the ground and immediately began to beat Fer with it. Fer wanted to fight back or to run away, but instead he simply shielded himself from his grandfather’s blows until the beating finally stopped, as he had done many times before.

“Use what’s in your skull now and break their skulls later,” he thought again to himself over and over.

For the next week, Fer nursed his wounds and bruises, did his chores for his step-grandmother, tried to avoid Aid and his friends as much as possible, and visited the maiden in the hut whenever he could.

The first time he visited the maiden again after his grandfather beat him, he suddenly hugged her and held her close to him in his arms, more to reassure himself than her. He cried in front of her, telling her what had happened and how angry he was at his grandparents and Aid. He talked to her the whole time in a low voice. He didn’t even know if she spoke the community’s language or understood him, but for some reason the maiden felt like the only person who he could safely talk to. He felt an irresistible connection to her, and kissed her, but didn’t fuck her again that time.

The maiden seemed surprised at his changed demeanor and was mostly stiff and unresponsive, but did briefly return some of his affection when she kissed his bruised arm after he kissed her breasts.

The next day, Fer came to see her again and put his arms around her. This time the maiden returned his embrace more readily than before, even returning his kiss when he kissed her mouth.

As the days passed, their sex became more passionate and the maiden seemed to genuinely moan with pleasure after a while.

“Do you understand me when I speak to you,” Fer asked one day.

“I understand a little,” the maiden finally replied hesitantly in a strange accent.

“I love you,” Fer said.

The maiden suddenly looked sad again and held her face in her hands.

“Please… will you help me?” she finally said as she looked up at him with a desperate expression on her face.

Fer was surprised at this request but looked deeply into her eyes and nodded.

“Yes, I will help you,” he replied, kissing her face, and she smiled, and tears streamed from her face as she kissed him back and let out a moan of relief as she nestled into him.

She was so beautiful when she smiled, Fer thought. Then the female druid knocked on the door and he had to leave.

Once the idea was planted in Fer’s mind, to help the maiden, to rescue her, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He didn’t want to her to be sacrificed. He didn’t want the entire community to keep fucking her. It filled him with homicidal rage to even think about it. There had to be a way he could stop it.

“Use what’s in your skull now and break their skulls later,” Fer whispered as he lay alone in his cot that night. “Later, later… but when is later?”

Soon he began making a plan. A violent and crazy plan. At first, he entertained this plan more as something to fantasize about, but soon it began to take shape, and the more he visited the maiden, the more he felt the desire the strong carry it out. He wanted the maiden to himself and he thought this was the only way he could ever get that. If he stayed here in the village and did nothing, he would always be mocked by Aid and he would never get a wife.

“Tonight,” Fer finally said as he kneeled down in front of the maiden on one of his visits. “Tonight, something is going to happen, and I’m going to come back here and take you away. Be ready.”

“I love you. I love you so much,” the maiden replied, and they made love passionately, if briefly, before the druid interrupted them and Fer had to go. She was wetter now and moaned and shook quietly beneath him as he fucked her.

As Fer exited the hut for what he hoped would be the last time in this way, he saw Aid again standing some distance off and grinning mockingly at him. How Fer wished he could kill Aid too, but that wasn’t part of his plan unless he got lucky.

Fer went into his grandfather’s barn and checked on the weapons and goods he had hidden there near where he slept. Extra tunics, blankets, food, an axe and knives, bow and arrows, some javelins, and several kegs of beer.

Fer ate his bowl of porridge that his step-grandmother served him after doing his chores and Fer thanked her with a smile on his face. He would soon have his vengeance on that bitch, and his grandfather too who he also treated in an uncommonly friendly manner. “Use what’s in your skull now and break their skulls later,” he smirked and thought to himself as he turned his head away.

Fer then retreated to his place in the barn as soon as possible, strapped the goods he had stashed except for the beer onto the back of his grandfather’s strongest pony, and waited. When it got dark, he stepped out into the cool night air with his cloak on and listened for the sounds of activity to die down in the community. As he did so, he rehearsed what he was going to do that night. He felt excited but jittery.

Finally, at about the middle of the night, Fer could no longer see any flashes of fires or hear any far-off noise or voices aside from the occasional dogs barking. This was it. He returned inside the barn and took a keg of beer and as quietly as he could crept with it into the hut where his grandfather and step-grandmother were sleeping. As quietly as possible, he slowly poured its contents onto the walls, and especially soaked a pile of old rags. He could hear his grandfather snoring in the bedroom.

Then he returned to the barn and returned quietly back to the hut with an axe. As he returned back into the pitch-black interior of the hut, he immediately felt a sense of unease. He could only just barely see in front of him by the light of the moonlight coming from the open door, and he saw the entrance to his grandfather’s section of the hut in front, partitioned by a narrow doorway with a curtain.

His grandfather’s snoring. It had stopped. “Shit,” he thought to himself.

Fer dared not move forward and dared not move back and close the door from where the moonlight shone lest he be heard, though his grandfather may have already heard him open the door. Why had he spent all that time draining the beer in the house instead of killing his grandfather first? That was probably what woke him up, he cursed himself.

Fer stood for a long time, waiting, his heart racing and beating in his chest. The silence was deafening. “Shit,” Fer thought again. He couldn’t wait all night like this. He still had so much to do.

At last, he willed himself to take a quiet step forward and to the left, trying to get out of the beam from the doorway and not be directly in front of the curtain leading into the bedroom. Then suddenly as he stepped forward in the dark he ran into something that hit his thigh. It was the table. It made a noise.

There was another long silence as Fer didn’t make another move.

“Who’s there?” his grandfather’s voice finally called out softly, breaking the silence.

And Fer was suddenly spurred into action. All the times that his grandfather had beaten him came rushing back into his head, and he began walking forward again toward where he could barely make out the curtain. He ran into a stool and then something else that rattled in the dark, but stepped around them. He reached the curtain and flung it open.

“Who’s there?” his grandfather called out again in a loud voice, and then he heard his grandfather saying, “What? What?”

Fer could only see pitch blackness in the small bedroom behind the curtain, but he knew instinctively where his grandparents were sleeping on their cot at the far end, and he was guided by their voices as he walked steadily toward them in the dark with his axe raised.

Suddenly he sensed something moving in front of him and swung forcefully at it with his axe, and it struck something heavy that fell off to the side. The next few minutes were a flurry of chaos and terror as Fer swung wildly in the blackness of the room, hitting the bed, walls, sausages hanging from the ceiling, and his grandfather and step-grandmother’s bodies. When either of them yelled or screamed in terror or pain, he swung in that direction, he felt wet platters on himself that felt like sweat but he later realized was blood.

Though grievously wounded, his grandfather finally managed to escape out from the curtained entrance to the room where he tripped and tumbled head over heels and tumbled across the table in the center of the outside room. Fer followed his silhouette against the moonlight shining from the open door and finished his grandfather off with the axe where he laid sprawled in the kitchen over the broken table. Then he went back and made sure his step-grandfather was completely finished off as well.

“Well, now I’ve broken both of your skulls later, haven’t I?” he mumbled to himself.

During the chaos, Fer had bumped his head on the low entrance to his grandfather’s room and his head now rung and he could barely think straight, but he dragged his grandfather’s body back into the bedroom and then went back out to the barn.

He wasn’t sure how much noise he had made or how loud they had really screamed but he hoped none of the nearby houses noticed anything. He didn’t see anyone outside. In the barn, he got another keg of beer and splashed some more around the doorway of his grandfather’s hut. He wanted to make sure his grandfather’s hut burned to the ground, but it and the neighbor’s wattled and thatched huts should burn easily enough regardless.

After going back in to loot any dried sausages and portable foods and goods he could salvage from his grandfather’s hut in the dark, he loaded them onto the back of the pony in the barn along with the other things. Then, having almost forgotten, he went back inside and fumbled around and found his grandfather’s sword in a sheath beside the bed. “You won’t be needing this anymore, old man,” Fer said in the direction where he thought he grandfather’s almost decapitated corpse lay in the dark.

He had planned to burn down the huts of the men standing guard outside the maiden’s hut tonight, but he had forgotten to check who was actually there tonight. He also realized it was harder to find his way around the community in the dark than he had realized. Some of the local hound dogs that roamed the community approached him and began to bark at and lick at him as well as he stood in his yard. When he stepped into the moonlight, he realized it was because his tunic was covered in blood. He took it off and let them have it.

It was time to stop now and just start the fires, he told himself. He went back into the barn, lit a small oil lamp, and entered back into his grandfather’s hut with another keg of beer to splatter around including in the bedroom. In the lamplight, he saw the full horror of the grisly scene and grimaced.

When the inside seemed to have started burning, Fer exited the building and walked a ways the neighboring hut, and tried to light the thatch on it too but it kept smoking and going out with sudden gusts of wind, and he could already smell the smoke from his grandfather’s hut.

The dogs started bothering him again too, and feeling a sudden sense of panic, he turned and ran back to the barn, took out the loaded-up pony, and set its thatch and straw alight using a final keg of beer for flammability. Then he led the pony out across the moor to a patch of woods about a quarter mile beyond, where he tied the pony to a tree and watched his grandparent’s hut and the barn. At first, he didn’t see much but slowly he started to see smoke rise up and silhouette against the moonlit sky, and then he saw little bits of flame, first in the barn, then in the hut as the thatched roofs caught fire and burned.

Then the dogs began to bark, and after what seemed like forever, Fer heard shouts and could dimly make out people running about in the darkness in the community.

When it seemed like there was enough commotion, Fer left the pony in the woods, and, taking the axe in one hand and his grandfather’s short sword in the other, he crept back out across the moor and toward the hut where the maiden was kept, keeping low to the ground, though he knew he wouldn’t make much of a silhouette because he had his to the woods.

When he got close enough, Fer dropped to his stomach and tried to make out if the guards were still there at the fire in front of the hut. He saw the silhouette of one and crept closer. Then someone, probably the druidess, came out of the hut and Fer overheard the guard and her conversing.

They walked out in front of the fire and pointed at his grandfather’s house and barn which were now in flames and smoking on the other side of the community.

“I sent Cellach to see what’s happening,” Fer made out the remaining guard saying. Then after a little more talking that Fer couldn’t make out, the druidess went back inside the hut and the guard continued to anxiously pace in front of the fire.

Fer’s heart was racing and he decided to seize the moment. He stood up and began walking the final hundred paces toward the fire. The guard didn’t notice until he got very close.

“Baetan,” Fer said, recognizing the guard, “there’s a fire.”

“I know, I don’t know what happened,” Baetan started to say, walking toward Fer. Then he saw Fer’s weapons in the darkness and stopped for a moment, looking at him quizzically. Fer lunged forward and sunk his axe into Baetan’s skull, bringing him to the ground with sickly thunking sound.

Fer didn’t particularly hate Baetan but he was Aid’s cousin. If only it was Aid he had just struck down, he thought. Then turned his attention toward the bolted doors of the hut.

He took out the wooden bolt and tried to push it open, but it didn’t move. It must be bolted from the inside too he thought.

Thinking quickly, he knocked on the doors insistently. “What is it?” he heard the female druid say from within.

Trying to mimic how he remembered Baetan sounding, Fer replied to come out quickly.

“Why? What is it?” the druid asked again, sounding afraid.

Fer tried to think of an excuse and there was what seemed like a long silence.

“I see something strange and I want you to come look at it,” he finally replied. There was no answer.

Then he saw the light of the fire reflected in a pale eye looking out at him through the slit in the middle of the bolted doors. Almost on instinct, he stabbed his sword directly through the opening and into the eye. A cry shrieked out and the eye reeled back. Then Fer stuck his sword lower down through the opening and used it to pry the wooden bolt up from the other side and open the door.

Moonlight flooded into the entrance, the same area where Fer had often entered and washed himself before visiting the maiden, and he saw the terrified druidess with blood streaming down her face sprawled before him on the floor and shrieking. It briefly reminded him of how his step-grandmother had shrieked when he pushed her into the mud. He stabbed down at her repeatedly with the sword in an effort to shut her up and then nearly beheaded her with the axe.

Then he unbolted the smaller door leading to where the maiden was kept and opened it. It was pitch black inside, as evidently they closed a door over the opening in the roof at night.

“It’s me,” he called. “Come quickly.”

After there was no answer, he opened the door wider to let in some moonlight and saw the maiden standing naked in the corner. Finally, she came toward him and followed him out.

“Quickly,” Fer urged her, and they ran out past the body of the druid in the entrance of the hut and Baetan by the fire outside. Fer guided her across the moor and into the grove of trees where the pony was waiting for him.

Fer lifted the maiden up onto the pony, still naked, and then climbed onto it himself and began to ride away from the community as swiftly as it would go. Glancing back one last time, Fer thought the fire at his grandfather’s hut and barn seemed to by dying down, but it was hard to tell. The maiden coughed from the smoke which he could smell strongly too even from this distance.

They rode all night and as much as possible the next day, always in an easterly direction away from the community. They crossed vast moors and woodlands, and then hills and mountains. After the first night, they would huddle under boulders or little makeshift shelters to sleep. They lit fires for warmth after the first few nights, but Fer was still nervous about being followed. He realized it wouldn’t be very hard for the community to guess that he had something to do with the fires and killings and stealing the maiden. Then they would probably try to track him down.

The maiden was dressed in a spare tunic of Fer’s now for warmth and wore a cloak wrapped around her, as did he. After the first few days, they made love for the first time since the escape on a cloak by the fire. The maiden looked more beautiful than ever as her skin reflected in the flame.

On the second day, Fer had used a dagger to pry the metal collar off her neck, and she had flung it into a river.

Fer kissed her bare neck now and her breasts and face and caressed her all over. The maiden kissed and caressed him as well moaned as he made love to her on the cloak.

“I love you,” she gasped.

“You’re mine now,” Fer answered as he came inside her. “Finally, you belong only to me.”

They ate the sausage and bread and hardened cheese Fer had brought with them on the pony from his grandfather’s house, but soon that ran out and Fer realized he needed to hunt.

He took the bow and arrows he had brought on about the fifth day and descended the hill where they were camped to some woods to look for deer, but after several hours of not finding anything he went back up to where the maiden was and said it was time to move on.

They only ate some scraps that night where they camped in a different place. The next day Fer went hunting again and got off a shot at a deer but missed, Again, they only ate the last of their scraps. The next day, more determined, Fer finally brought down a small doe and they skinned and cooked it on the fire. They lived like this for weeks, but always moving and traveling further east.

When Fer finally asked the maiden what her name was, she answered said it was Fausta. The name sounded somewhat strange and foreign to Fer. Though she still had a thick accent, she explained that she had been captured by pirates about eight years earlier and kept by the druids in the mountains until now. She picked up some of the language during that time but even that was difficult as the druids rarely spoke to her while holding her prisoner, but she came to learn what fate awaited her. There were other girls held prisoner there too who she had sometimes secretly communicated with.

One day, Fausta told Fer that she thought she was pregnant and asked him to feel her belly. He caressed her belly which seemed slightly swollen and then kissed her on the lips and pushed her to the ground right by the river they were camped beside. They rolled into some tall grass as a cushion, and Fer pulled off Fausta’s tunic, kissed her all over, and then flipped her around and fucked her from behind. He liked fucking her from behind the best now because she was the tightest that way.

Fausta moaned but looked a little disappointed afterward and tried to kiss Fer again facing him. Fer saw her disappointed look and felt angry. She didn’t like how he fucked her anymore? After all he had done for her?

He kissed her back, but then pushed her away and went to continue butchering the deer carcass he had been working on.

As winter set in, deer became scarcer, and they began to hear wolves howling in the distance. Fer finally decided they would spend the winter in a cave he’d found on one of the mountains they had been staying near. He went hunting, but increasingly made less and less kills.

By the middle of winter, Fer and Fausta had been reduced to a state of starvation. Their faces grew thin and they could feel each other’s ribs when they fucked briefly by the warmth of the fire in the back of the cave, an increasingly rarity.

Fer continued to go out to hunt, but for over a month he hadn’t come back with anything. The last of their once strong pony that they had been forced to kill and eat was almost gone now or its flesh too rotten to be consumed.

Finally, Fer stopped going out to hunt. “It’s too cold. It’s the dead of winter. We’re going to die,” he said. He would only go out to collect more firewood now as he starved.

Fausta urged him to continue, and then tried to go out to hunt herself with his bow but found herself too weak as well and didn’t know how. Maybe Fer was right. She did feel herself dying and felt hopeless again as she long had in the many years she had spent as a slave of the druids, being abused, beaten, and raped, and dreading the fate that she knew would ultimately befall her. This scrawny boy, Fer, had rescued her she owed her life to him. But she also saw that he was brutal and selfish. He had murdered his grandparents and kidnapped her because of some kind of jealousy toward another boy his age, as he had told her. Now this Fer seemed resigned to his own death and hers, and that of their unborn child that still seemed to survive inside her despite her malnutrition.

At last, she knew what she had to do. She would not die. She would not die after all this. She would survive and return to her homeland and find her family again.

That night, after Fer had fallen asleep huddled against her for warmth under the blankets in the cave, Fausta slowly and stealthily extricated herself. Fer seemed to wake but seemed to assume she was only relieving herself or putting more wood on the fire. Instead, she fumbled in the flickering light of the dying fire for the axe that Fer kept in the corner with the other weapons. She picked it up, feeling its weight in her hands. It was heavy but she could still swing it fast enough.

She hesitated for a long while thinking about whether to go through with it. Finally, she turned and walked back toward the bundle of blankets where Fer lay, holding the axe concealed behind her back. He didn’t look up at her. Suddenly she pulled out the axe and struck it down at the top of Fer’s head sticking out of the blankets as hard as she could.

The axe bounced as it hit his head with a sickening thud and Fausta almost lost her grip of it. Then a shocking and terrible sound echoed out as Fer sat straight up in the blankets, his mouth agape in a horrible scream. He looked up at her, his eyes wide and wild with terror and rage as thick blood matted his hair where she had struck him.

In a panic, he began to scrawl away from her toward the fire. Fausta was in shock too but tried to recover herself and followed him, quickly striking him over and over on the back of his head and neck as he tried to crawl away. Finally, he was still and silent.

Fausta then sat for a long time over his body. She didn’t weep but simply rested her hand on his chest where his once beating heart had been as the warmth slowly faded from him. After many hours, night turned into morning and Fausta stood up and began to butcher Fer’s body, carefully shredding off all the meat, cooking it on the fire which she frequently gathered more wood for, and set it aside on a blanket when it was done as she had learned to do to make it last as long as possible.

After five days of eating his flesh, Fausta had regained a lot of her strength and felt much better. She also miscarried her fetus during this time and felt less burdened by that as well.

Then the wolves came. The howling that she and Fer had first heard several months ago had come increasingly closer, and one day she saw one down in the valley outside the cave. She had anticipated their arrival and stowed the weapons and tools inside a deeper inner part of the cave separated from the main part by a narrow tunnel. She also stored Fer’s meat and the remainder of his carcass in there were it was always cool and helped to preserve it.

When she saw the wolf, she retreated into the inner part of the cave to hide. After a while, it followed her in and looked around, but didn’t pursue her into the narrow passage. That night, Fausta stayed awake listening into the darkness, but trying to keep a small fire going in her deep passage, although it was hard because of the lack of ventilation. Then she saw them silhouetted against the moonlight at the entrance of the cave. Not just one wolf but at least several. They approached the narrow passage, then growled. Fausta leveled one of the spears at the narrowed point of the passage and had a sword and axe nearby.

She growled back when the wolves growled at her and there was a standoff for what seemed an eternity. Finally, one of the wolves entered the passage and tried to slip through the narrowest point. Fausta stabbed it quickly and repeatedly with the spear and it whimpered loudly and reeled back. All the wolves then fled the cave, though they came back the next day to scavenge the pony and deer carcasses strewn about the cave floor.

Fausta had to be constantly alert in case the wolves against tried to get through her passage but they seemed to have learned their lesson and left her alone. Eventually they gave up on the bones in the cave and left for better hunting opportunities.

Fausta ate the meat slowly and made it last as long as possible, and she rested as much as possible at the entrance of the tunnel. She broke open his bones with the axe and sucked out the marrow. Fer’s body had restored her strength and kept her alive, but she would need more meat or she would start to deteriorate again.

It seemed warmer now and Fausta finally ventured back out of the cave for the first time in over a week, bundled in several tunics and cloaks, and holding a bow with arrows and a sword.

She practiced shooting the arrows into the hillside, and then began looking for deer each day. Her condition began to deteriorate again as she ran out of the last of the meat and failed to bring down a deer, but the weather got warmer, and finally, one day, she shot a deer right through the neck and brought it down. She then dragged it back to the cave, butchered, and cooked it.

When spring came, Fausta finally moved on, carrying what she could on her back including well-cooked strips of meat and moved on in the direction she thought was eastward.

She moved on like that for about a few more weeks, hunting and camping in one place for a few days, and then moving on.

Finally, as she reached the peak of another hill, she saw the eastern sea on the horizon. Home. She felt an excitement and joy she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Soon after that, moving down the valley, she came across goats and saw a shepherd in the distance.